Adding Forum On Joomla site - PHPBB3 of Fireboard ?

[varsid]

Hi All,

I want to add a forum to my existing Joomla 1.5 website running on Linux server.
Through different articles I came to know that PHPBB3 and Fireboard forums are the available options.

Now I need to choose one of them. Could anyone please tell me the advantages/disadvantages of PHPBB3/Fireboard based forums and which one works better with Joomla ?

Also kindly suggest me some supporting documents on how to add these forums to a joomla website.

Thanks,
Varsid.

[drsawbones]

rockettheme makes a living integrating phpbb3 and joomla with clean matching templates.
(personally I use jfusion)
fireboard? for joomla 1.5? don't think so... kunena forum component has importers for it though, as well as probably CB (community builder)...

[varsid]

Thanks...But still not convinced enough to choose one ...Any more inputs from anyone ?

[Geoff]

I think it really comes down to how active your forum is going to be.

If your site's focus is discussion and you plan to have a lot of focus on the forum, I would use phpBB and bridge it with RokBridge, JFusion, or some other bridge. IMO, you get more flexibility using phpBB, however the tradeoff is that it can take more work to make your forum look like the rest of your site.

If your site's focus is more on content and the forum is just an addition, than native solutions like Agora, Kuena, etc. would be better. Integration with the rest of your site is much smoother than using something like phpBB but you do lose the flexibility of something like phpBB.

[varsid]

Thanks Geoff,

If I use PHPBB , do my user have to log in seperately for Joomla site and PHPBB forum or the same Login ID and Password will work on both ?

[Tonie]

That's the reason you need the bridge Geoff mentions, so you don't have to log in twice.

[varsid]

I am using Kunena forum...It is working great !!